


Like Fireworks

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:34:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6136750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But even just this much is a lot, enough to make her stomach flutter like some starstruck teenager when Masako reaches for her hand, for her fingers to knot tightly with Masako’s in response.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Fireworks

“It’s good.”

“You don’t need to sound surprised.”

Masako’s only response is to take a bigger bite of the churro in her hand. She’d been wary about the food prices here, and while Alex will freely admit that everything is expensive it’s worth it once in a while. And, yeah, she could get a six pack of the shitty beer in her hand for less than she’d paid for the one cup, she couldn’t drink it at the county fair at sunset, walking with Masako.

Alex leans over to steal a piece of the churro for herself, savoring the warm sweetness. Masako yanks it away before she can get any more and glares at her.

“Buy your own.”

Alex sighs. It’s tempting, but they still have to pay for rides and games and maybe souvenirs, too—she feels like a kid in a comic book store with five dollars from her parents on the day all the new issues were released. Games it is, at least for now. She tugs on Masako’s hand, pulling her to the midway ahead, the neon lights that this time of day are only beginning to stand out against the sky, wavering against the layers of smoke from the food carts and leftover haze from the heat of the day. Masako glances at her, half-questioning.

“Games.”

“Ah.”

“You’ve done this before, right?”

“It’s been a while.”

Alex hums, and Masako doesn’t elaborate. She’s the one they suggested going here, though; she’d read about the fair on some travel website (not that it had taken much to convince Alex). Alex herself doesn’t have much experience with this kind of thing, although she’d been here before when she was in college and she’d gone to a couple of festivals with Tatsuya and Taiga when she’d been to visit them in Japan. Between their experiences, this ought to be fun. She points at the first booth she sees, some kind of water gun game.

“Let’s do that one!”

They’re both horrible at it. Masako is easily frustrated at how crooked the stream of water from her gun seems to be going, and the light is so dim it takes Alex until everyone else is finished and she’s not halfway to the top to realize she hasn’t stayed close to the target. They play another round, with similar results—it’s not as if the prizes here are any good, anyway. Masako’s still glowering at her gun as they walk away.

“You pick next?” says Alex.

“Sure,” says Masako. They wander for a bit, passing booth similar to the one they’d left and places with whack-a-mole and games to knock down pins and skee-ball and pails of dirty water where children stick their grubby little hands to grab at plastic fish. And then they reach a clearing, a tower outside of the enclosure of the tent—the strongman.

“Hey, little lady! Want to test your strength? I’ll give you a prize if you can get it above the top of my head. How about it?”

Masako glares at him. She’s still not fluent in English but she knows enough to catch his meaning; that much is clear. Alex glares, too, even though the man’s ignoring her—he probably thinks Masako is much less likely to hit that height (the jokes on him, but that doesn’t make him any less annoying).

“How much?” says Masako.

“For you? Five dollars.”

Masako’s face is icy as she reaches into her wallet. This should be good.

The man hands her the comically-sized hammer but doesn’t let go and give her the full weight at first. Masako snatches it; her arm tenses but does not give, and the man’s smile falters. Masako steps back calmly and raises the hammer. She brings it down onto the target and the lever rises, above the man’s head and higher until it hits the bell.

Staring at the top, admiring her work like this, Masako has never looked more attractive to Alex. She more than kind of wants to kiss her senseless right here, even though there are people waiting in line and the man is still waffling about what prizes are available. Masako points at a goofy-looking stuffed frog, and the man chatters away at her about how strong she is while he fetches it. Masako ignores him (she’s probably tuning him out).

She presses the frog into Alex’s hands. “For you.”

She’s so damn cool about it. Alex nearly forgets to close her hands around the frog.

“Thank you.”

“You want me to win you another?”

Alex sighs—she wouldn’t mind, more of this kind of attention, getting to see Masako do this kind of thing again. But even just this much is a lot, enough to make her stomach flutter like some starstruck teenager when Masako reaches for her hand, for her fingers to knot tightly with Masako’s in response.

“Let’s walk around for a while.”

* * *

Masako buys them snow-cones; the sun has set but it’s still hot and hazy and humid enough for the syrup and melting ice to drip through the oh-so-convenient holes in the bottom of the wax-paper cones. Alex’s fingers are turning turquoise from her own; she licks the syrup off and Masako laughs and it’s unfair how neatly she’s eating hers, how she’d procured napkins from somewhere to act as a dam for the bottom of her own (her lips and tongue are stained bright red though, deeper than technicolor rubies).

They hear the fireworks before they see them, the boom that reverberates through their bodies before their eyes go up, magnetized, quick enough to see the residual sparks shower down, hitting the air with a series of small, almost metallic, pops. From this angle Alex can’t make out much (although that could very well be her eyes).

“You want to move closer?”

Halfway through her question, another firework consumes itself in the air, exploding outward into red and green. Masako knits her eyebrows together.

“What?”

She leans in to hear; Alex leans in to speak—their mouths are barely two inches apart. Alex expects Masako to draw back, maybe even to flush or turn her head so Alex’s mouth is at her ear. She doesn’t. Another firework explodes overhead, and Alex presses her mouth to Masako’s.

She tastes saccharine, like the artificial cherry snow-cone syrup that coats her mouth still and makes her lips stick to Alex’s. The sounds of the midway and the bright pops of the fireworks have faded to faraway echoes, as if the pulse of Masako’s heartbeat against her is drowning it out, as if they’re standing at the top of a fifty-story building and everything else is below them. They don’t need a good view of the fireworks for this, just each other.

**Author's Note:**

> tysm @cerisen for the prompt! 
> 
> also it's the evening of the last day of february & i should have done sth before now orz (both for femslash feb & to keep up my 'posting every weekend' schedule)


End file.
